Several tools for finding hotels and other points of interest are available on the Internet. For example, referring to FIG. 10, Expedia.com allows a user to search for a hotel in a city, near an airport, near a particular attraction (e.g., the Statue of Liberty), or near a particular address. Several other websites offer comparable services. For example, Hotel.com, Priceline.com, and Orbitz.com each allow a user to search for hotels in specific cities and a subset of these websites allow a user to find a hotel near a specific attraction. These services are satisfactory for business travels and more, generally, for users who are familiar with the geographic region where they seek a hotel room. However, travelers who are planning a vacation destination or, for other reasons, want to obtain a hotel room in a location of interest must make do with the limited offerings provided by existing Internet based travel services.
To understand the deficiencies in the prior art, consider a traveler that would like to stay in San Francisco. Using, for example, the Expedia.com illustrated in FIG. 10, the user specifies “San Francisco,” a check in date, and a check out date. A typical return for such a query provides information on the Grand Hyatt on Union square, the Renaissance Parc Hotel three blocks away from Union Square, the Cathedral Hill hotel in downtown San Francisco, the Hotel Palomar near Market Street, the Hotel Nikko near Union Square, among many others hotels. These hotels are all in San Francisco and a brief synopsis of what the hotels are like, including a description of the attractions near these hotels, is typically provided in response to the query. However, a traveler unfamiliar with San Francisco is forced to manually review the information on each of returned hotels to determine whether the hotels are located in a part of San Francisco that may interest the traveler. Queries such as which hotels are located near museums, which hotels are near good restaurants, and which hotels are nearest to the tourist attractions that most interest San Francisco tourists (Fisherman's wharf, Ghirardelli square, cable cars, Union square, Union Street, etc.) must be manually determined by the user. Certainly, a traveler can use a web site such as Expedia.com or Orbitz.com to identify hotels near a single attraction, for example, Union square. But this is unsatisfactory because the traveler typically does not visit San Francisco to see a single attraction. Thus, in order to guarantee that a hotel is in the vicinity of several attractions, the traveler must do independent research to guarantee that a particular hotel is in an area of San Francisco that is proximate to the attractions that the traveler wants to see.
With the examples provided above, it can be seen that the prior art is deficient in methods for allowing a user to find a hotel or other property that is located close to many points of interest (POIs), such as restaurants, tourist activities, attractions, shopping, night life, parks, etc. Some existing hotel search systems allow users to browse hotel listings and to restrict such listings to a specific city (e.g., San Francisco, Calif.), neighborhood (e.g.: South of Market, San Francisco, Calif.) or even to a defined area surrounding a specific location or address (e.g., 100 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif.). However, such systems do not provided a feature for filtering candidate hotels, properties or other points of interest based on their proximity to clusters of other nearby points of interest. The same need exists in other domains such as real estate. For example, a user may wish to find houses that are close to schools, parks, shopping centers, or other points of interest.
Accordingly, given the above background, what is needed in the art are improved systems and methods for identifying points of interest (e.g., a property such as a hotel), based upon proximity to more than one attraction.
Discussion or citation of a reference herein will not be construed as an admission that such reference is prior art to the present invention.